Old news, I know, but better late than never. Sorry.
Quickoffice has announced the acquisition of Dynoplex. Quickoffice is known for its Office suite for the Palm and Symbian platforms, while Dynoplex is known for its Office suite for the Blackberry platform. You can check the official announcement in plain Corporatese, sure to include the obligatory “leading provider” moniker, here. The text is hidden with a little Javascript. Open the page and click the link to view it.
The acquisition strategically enhances Quickoffice’s unique position as the premier mobile office software provider for major platforms, including Symbian S60, UIQ, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Google Android. Quickoffice is now able to expand on its strong Symbian market position and enter key markets in North America.
With the companies combined engineering teams, Quickoffice will accelerate the development of mobile office suite software to additional platforms and devices.
Exact terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.
That’s pretty much the gist of the announcement if you filter out the gung-ho talk.
Andrew D. Smith, of the The Dallas Morning News, has some more information:
The company expects its products to work on all major smart phones by year’s end.
“Any user, on any kind of smart phone, will be able to view, edit and save Office files just as they can on a computer. Every formatting detail will come through,” Quickoffice chief executive Alan Masarek said.
Quickoffice users can already do all that on their Symbian and Palm phones, but they have limited ways to access files. Quickoffice and rival programs such as Documents to Go give users only two ways to transfer documents: attach them to e-mails or attach the smart phone to a computer. Such options make it impossible to grab a document on the fly without help from someone else, such as a co-worker. Quickoffice hopes to eliminate this problem when it rolls out its Quickaccess service in the coming weeks. By adding a program to their computers, Quickaccess users will be able to open and edit all their Office files on their phones. Once they’re done, Quickaccess saves changes and syncs all copies of the file.
“Any user, on any kind of smart phone, will be able to view, edit and save Office files just as they can on a computer. Every formatting detail will come through,” Quickoffice chief executive Alan Masarek said.
I was unable to find out what is going to happen to Dynoplex’s existing product line. Meanwhile, Dynoplex has added native file format support and slashed prices a little. I, for one, welcome our new Office suite overlords since Documents to Go for Blackberry is taking forever to become available.
